Abstract of talk by Marie-Agnès CourtyCNRS-CM. Lab. de Science des Sols et Hydrologic, INA P-G, 78850 Grignon, France. email: fedoroff[at]diamant.jouy.inra.drPresented at the SIS Conference: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations (11th-13th July 1997)Further investigations allow to re-examine the nature, age, causes and effects of the third millennium catastrophe identified from our earlier findings. Test on various late Gird millennium BC archaeological deposit and contemporaneous provides evidence for the regional occurrence in northern Syria of a layer with an uncommon petrographic assemblage, dated at ca. 2350 BC (transition between late Early Dynastic and Early Akkad). It consists of fine send-sized, well sorted spherules of various composition (silica, silicates and fibro-radiated calcite), millimetric fragments of a black, vesicular, amorphous material made of silicates with Mg-Ca carbonate and phosphate inclusions, ovoid micro-aggregates made of densely packed crystals (calcite, gypsum or feldspars) and exogenous angular fragments of a coarse crystallised igneous rock. All these particles are only present in this specific layer and are finely mixed with mud-brick debris or with a burnt surface horizon in the contemporaneous soils. In occupation sequences, the layer displays an uncommon dense packing of sand-sized, very porous aggregates that suggests disintegration of the mud-brick construction by an air blast. In the virgin soil, the burnt horizon contains black soot and graphite, and appears to have been instantaneously fossilised by a rapid and uncommon colluvial wash. Occurrence in a previously recorded thick tephra deposit of particles identical to some of the mysterious layer and resemblance of its original pseudo-sand fabric with t he exploded one of the mysterious layer confirms that the later is contemporaneous with the tephra deposit It has been however impossible to find typical tephra shards in sites located at a few km around the one with the tephra deposit The restricted occurrence of the later suggests that the massive tephra accumulation can no longer be considered as a typical fallout derived from the dispersion of material from a terrestrial volcanic explosion. Analytical investigations in various directions have been unable, so far, to refute or confirm that a cosmic event would have been the cause for production of both the widely distributed mysterious particles and the localised thick tephra. Origin of this mysterious phenomena still remains unsolved.
The excellent stratigraphical correlation between sites that are distant of a few hundred km clearly shows that the instantaneous dust fallout, previously considered as the initiative mechanism to the ca. 2200 yr BC abrupt climate change, occurred more than one hundred years earlier. The loose soil fabric, originally correlated with effects of strong winds and rapid establishment of aridity, can now be re-interpreted and possibly assigned to a violent blow-up. The theory of the Akkad empire collapse has, however, lost its basis. Soil specialists, geochemists and archaeologists should join their effort to solve this problem, and debate the exact nature of the socio cultural echo to this extraordinary event Our study illustrates the exceptional potential of archaeological sites to offer well preserved sedimentary archives of instantaneous phenomena that have shacked past terrestrial environments. It also demonstrates the importance of a high temporal resolution for debating causality of natural catastrophe on societal phenomena. Soil-sedimentary markers are in a way less subjective than historical sources for providing such a precision, although their interpretation might also be controversial, particularly when facing lack of analogues from the past or the present.
I would like to find out if any one has related the YD to the tilt of the earth that has been cited as the cause for the green Sahara about the same time. I understand these events are on different sides of the earth but if they both happened it is still the same earth that tilted. Please reply as I have a passion to know. Thanks
Hi Rachel: I will try and answer your question. First off, Yes the tilt of the Earth does have some influence upon climate. This is, as you probably know one of the three important cycles that our Earth undergoes in relation to the sun. The orbital tilt goes through an approximate 41,000 to 43,000 cycle with its tilt ranging from about 21.6 to 24.5 degrees. we are currently tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees. It is said that when the tilt is more sever (24.5 degrees) the climate in the Northern hemisphere is colder in winter at the mid to high latitudes. Conversely, when the tilt is at its least, the winters tend to be warmer. There may be some influence as well on the Sahara (But I don’t expect this is the prime reason for changes round about the time of the Younger Dryas. I have it by all accounts that yes the Sahara has been green periodically from the last ice age on into the Holocene (that began about 10,000 years ago). The specific times you are alluding to appeard to have the Sahara quite wet around 15,000 BP. This was within the mild Allerod Bolling interval, then accompanying the beginning of the Younger Dryas a shift in might well have been worldwide climate took place. This change was very sudden, likely in perhaps only one to three years. The climate generally became much colder and drier in the majority of locales. Coinciding with the cooling of the North Atlantic, the region that extends from southern Europe into Africa has a shift to much drier conditions. So you see that yes it was greener just after the last ice age, but became drier in the Younger dryas, but once again returned to mosr moist conditions shortly after the Younger Dryas ended. Hope this helps. Rod
It is possible that the exact date for this event at Tel Leilan is the same that the Maya gave for the Rio Cuarto impacts: 25 October, 2,360 BCE.
The entire population of Malta disappears from the face of the Earth at roughly this exact same time.
If there was any wetting of the Sahara it would likely have been due to impact dust load cooling of the Earth, rather than the Earth being tilted by impact.
If there was any wetting of the Sahara at 2,360 BCE it would likely have been from dust load cooling of the Earth, rather than the Earth being tilted by impact.
The YD impacts appear to have caused a change in the circulation of the Earth’s oceans, which may have played a large role in the drying of the Sahara.
Hi Ed: I think that yes the Tel Leilan event as detected by Marie Agnes Courty may well have taken place at the same time as Rio Cuarto. I will look into this further however. Also, the climate at this time actually became drier throughout much of Africa approximately 4500 BP. And this does seem to be the case when there are impacts events. Secondly the so called greening of the Sahara appears to coincide with times that are warmer as in the case of the Allerod and Bolling interstadials. thirdly, I do not believe that the relatively small impact events that we are speaking of here will have little if any significant influence upon the Earth’s orbit (in this case the tilt of the axis. We are not after all talking about ten Kilometre wide abjects striking the earth (as was the case 65 million years ago). Rather these events, including the one at the Younger Dryas, are in the form of what Bill Napier and Victor Clube describe as cosmic showers.
I have only now found your reply thanks. I understand I’m in another time frame than this article (a day late…) and out of sync but I have been reading about a 20,000 year cycle that causes the Sahara to cycle abruptly green and 5,000 years later abruptly back. We are 15,000 years out. Any thing like this cycle ?
I ran across this interesting work,
Its a study of modern and ancient astronomical observations and how they show that in 2345b.c. something happened that knocked the earth’s rotational axis off by a little bit, causing a wobble within the wobble.
It’s a shame that it’s only been noticed by creationist web media,
http://www.setterfield.org/Dodwell/Dodwell_Manuscript_1.html#note
“Further, these differences reach a unique maximum in the year 2345 B.C. When the differences, or “residuals” as they are usually called, are studied, they are found to trace out an exact logarithmic curve, viz., a curve of “logarithmic sines,” which has a secondary periodic oscillation, or “harmonic sine curve,” with diminishing amplitude, superimposed on it.
The interpretation of this combined curve is that it is one of recovery after a disturbance of the earth’s axis, which occurred in the year 2345 B.C. ”
The fact that this work, which was compiled from the 30’s to the sixties, hits at a date of 2345bc is amazing.
In the nineties M.A. Courty hit upon a date of 2350 for catastrophic events in the near east.
Baillie sees a tree ring event in 2345?
The Greenland ice cores show dust loading around these dates.
Three unrelated specialties all come up with the same date for a major event.
The manuscript has all kinds of good older information.
Like this bit about Tiahuanaco
“General conclusions, based on these archaeological studies, make it highly probable that the building of the great Solar Temple of Tiahuanaco in the Tiahuanaco I period took place at some time during the first millennium before the Christian Era.
C.R. Enock, in The Secret of the Pacific (1912, p. 169) says “The temples and fortresses of Cuzco date only from the eleventh century, or later, of the Christian era, when the Inca dynasty came into being; those of Tiahuanaco are of unknown age, and doubtless were built by the Aymaras at the time of their greatest culture before their overthrow, or even predecessors of those people. Some writers, indeed, have maintained that they were contemporaneous with Babylon or Assyria.” This would probably put the date somewhere between 800 B.C. and 600 B.C. In view of the formidable array of archaeological documents and evidence presented by Dr. Means, it seems wholly impossible to put the building of the Solar Temple of Tiahuanaco so far back as 4000 B.C.
Thus, although the astronomical and archaeological results for Tiahuanaco are not so precise as in the case of Karnak or Stonehenge, there is, nevertheless, a strong indication that the date of construction is in agreement with the new Curve of Obliquity rather than with Newcomb’s Curve. Attention is drawn to this ancient Solar Temple, not only because it probably gives support to the New Curve of Obliquity, but also because it is an interesting case for further investigation, from the point of view of both astronomy and archaeology.”
It seems to me that a near miss by a large enough asteroid could cause a change in the earth’s tilt and possibly a small orbital change, either of which would be capable of causing a disastrous climate change without leaving evidence on the earth such as a crater.
Barry,
That is along the lines of what i was thinking.
A near miss by a very large object might just give us that wobble in a wobble.
Add a debris shower or air bursts minor impacts, and you’ll have that cross discipline signal.
Starting to get a picture of there being series of celestial events which took place over a lengthy period of time from the YDB through to the early recorded civilizations.
Of course, not all of the events would have to be impact related, but I simply think we don’t really know what other extra-planetary “weather” our earth can be exposed to because we only look through what our own recent and direct experience has shown us.
This is why I am very interested in the topics that the Thunderbolts Project raises up for due consideration.
REH,
The picture that napier and clube paint is one of events happening, after the insertion of the taurid progenitor, regularlly ovewr the course of many millenia.
It might have even started before the YDB event, as celestial themed rock has been found in Nv. that predates the YDB event.
When i learned that the 11th century Pawnee earth lodge, the Ocmulgee lodge, was built to observe the arrival of the taurids, i began to re think the purpose of celestial calendars.
Many of the more famous celestial calendars predate agriculture, although their purported reason for being built is time time planting cycles.
Might they haver been built to time the arrival of the yearly terrifying meteor storms.
“Researchers have listed five characteristics of Pawnee earth lodges that indicated they had been used as a priestly observatory:
1.unobstructed view of the eastern sky
2.east-west orientation so that at the vernal equinox the sun’s first light would strike the altar
3.the size parameters of the lodge’s smoke hole and door (height and width) would be designed to view the sky
4.the lodge’s smoke hole would be constructed to view certain parts of the heavens-such as the Pleiades
5.the presence of four main interior support posts correctly aligned to the semicardinal points.
How well does the Ocmulgee earth lodge match up with these five conditions? The Ocmulgee earth lodge was constructed on top of a bluff or plateau thus it would have had an unobstructed view of the eastern sky. It also had four main interior support posts aligned to the semicardinal directions. The structure also had an east-west orientation yet, according to researchers, its doorway aligned to the sunrise on February 22nd and October 22nd instead of the vernal equinox (March 21.) (Using software called The Photographer’s Ephemeris I was able to confirm this alignment.)
This satellite image shows the door of the earth lodge perfectly aligned with the sunrise (yellow line) on October 22. ©The Photographer’s Ephemeris & Google Maps.
Why would the builders have chosen this date instead of the vernal equinox? Was there any significant astronomical event on this day that they may have wanted to mark? In our current era, October 22nd represents the peak night of the Orionid meteor shower. Yet 1,000 years ago, due to precession of the equinoxes, the Orionids would have peaked 14 days earlier on October 8th. The Taurid meteor shower, however, which today peaks on November 5th, would have also peaked 14 days earlier at that time; i.e., on October 22nd.
The Taurids were created by debris left over from comet Encke. This shower, which produces spectacular fireballs, appears to originate from the Pleiades asterism within the constellation Taurus. As noted previously, a bird-shaped platform or altar was located at the western end of the Ocmulgee earth lodge. This bird had a design around its eye known as the ‘forked eye motif’ that was in the shape of a two-tailed comet.[9]Thus 1000 years ago on October 22, sunlight would have streamed through the Ocmulgee earth lodge’s doorway and landed on the bird platform with the comet-like forked-eye design. That night the peak activity of the Taurid meteor shower would have occurred.”
http://lostworlds.org/archaeoastronomy-ocmulgee-earth-lodge/
Barry and CevinQ –
I would not agree that a near miss does much of anything. A 1 km object would perhaps decimate humans. IF it hit. A 1 km object passing by? The mass in terms of gravitational effects is pretty much nothing. And Velikovsky’s and electrical universe’s interchange of lightning bolts is all speculation. Mostly because meteors are not electrically charged – but also a 1 km body has so little possibility of a charge worth anything.
I don’t see squat happening on a fly-by. If it skims the atmosphere, it is almost certainly going to spiral down. If it is farther out, the electrical potential is going to be maybe MAYBE as much as a strong storm (but I doubt that very seriously). This was perhaps the part of Velikovsky’s things that I always thought was pretty uninformed. That and Venus. I understood about him focusing on Venus, but NAH, he was off base on Venus. The lightning bolt? Nope.
Take two magnetic objects and suspend them close by. Move them closer, and you don’t get an electrical spark; you just get magnetic effects, not sparks.
Someone show me where that is wrong, and maybe I will give it a more open-minded hearing.
This idea just flies in the face of everything we know about magnetic objects. Magnetic does not necessarily translate into electrical. Inducing a current in each body? Perhaps – but taken as a whole each body is no more charged than before (it is just rearranged). And it is NET charge AND DIFFERENCE OF POTENTIAL that are needed.
It is much more likely that the magnetic fields interact DIRECTLY upon each other’s magnetic fields than delivering a spark.
Confusing magnetic with electrical seems to be behind this idea. (Remember how WEAK the Earth’s magnetic field is, too. And I GUARANTEE that a meteor or comet does not have as strong a magnetic field – especially the 90%+ that are ROCK instead of iron-nickel.)
IMHO
REH –
First off, we are not an electrical universe website.
Secondly: “Starting to get a picture of there being series of celestial events which took place over a lengthy period of time from the YDB through to the early recorded civilizations.”
THIS is not something to be ruled out out of hand, but no work has been done in that direction.
One might ask why not. And two thoughts come to mind:
1. The YDB Team is so bogged down in trying to prove their forensic evidence (impactites, mostly) to their skeptics that there has been no time to pursue follow-up corollaries.
2. The YDB Team members are likely to have looked at that possibility and to have already ruled it out.
My thoughts run to a one-time ET event, with some factors not yet known or not yet considered explaining the 1300 years. Everyone’s focus has been on an “impact winter” somewhat like Sagan’s “nuclear winter” – but as Trent has pointed out elsewhere here, Sagan’s entire reputation wsa killed because his nuclear winter was a bogus idea.
And if the nuclear winter idea is bogus, then does that mean an impact winter may also have no validity?
And if an impact winter has no validity, then what possible factors could be left with which to explain a 1300-year ice age – and one that began and ended precipitously?
IMHO THAT is the $64,000 question.
A series of impacts over that time should be one of the things looked into – specifically – and should not be ruled out without such a solid inquiry into it. Even though I don’t think it happened, I would not mind eating crow if someone comes up with a solid hypothesis.
(I think it is cool to be in this (what I call a) “floundering stage” – when not enough is known yet and several possibilities can be on the table at once.)
I posted earlier on Dowdell but it hasnt shown up, and when I tried posting again, it said that it was a duplicate post.
But here it is again, to see if it works this time.
The tree ring event in the Irish Oak series is dated to 2354 BC and extends to 2345 BC.
It has been a while since I looked at Dodwell’s work, but from memory there are few issues with the thesis. Dodwell’s collected data and analysis would on first inspection seem compelling. However, the big thorn in the side comes from Newgrange which is aligned to the winter solstice, and was constructed around 3100 BC, so any change in axial tilt in 2345 BC, would change the sun rise point at the solstice after this date, unless the axis of the earth before 2345 BC was close to what we actually think it was from Stockwell’s calculations.
Secondly, there are the issues regarding the alignments of monuments, or rather the measurements of the alignments, whether the alignment exits, and the dating of them. Karnak is the most critical for various reasons which you can read about here https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/an-analysis-of-the-dodwell-hypothesis/
Thirdly, to shift the Earth’s axis by any great amount would require a tremendous amount of energy. The amount of energy required would require a very large impact, and likely not much on earth would have survived the impact itself (i imagine there would be quite a bit of crust melting), least of all the effects of an axial tilt. But then this is the point of Dodwell’s acceptance, since he links the 2345 event with the Noachian flood, especially since this approximately the date determined by Ussher for the flood. Dodwell was a rather devout christian, so finding a date would could be subjective to confirmation bias. We must remember that It is worth noting that there are other biblical chronologies which date the flood event differently, depending upon the year of Anno Mundi.
He says this,
“From a study of the starting point of other natural phenomena, which accord with a logarithmic sine curve (e.g. the first or major phase of the light curve of a new star after its initial outburst), it seems probable that the earth’s rotational axis was suddenly changed by the force of impact in 2345 B.C., from an original inclination of about 5 degrees, by an amount of about 21.5 degrees to a new inclination of about 26.5 degrees.”
Now there is probably a specific reason why he states that the earth originally had an inclination of 5 degrees. The reason is that the moons orbit around the earth is tilted 5 degrees to the ecliptic, while the Earth’s is 23.5 degrees. So obviously the moon must have orbited around the Earth’s equator in the past, and when the Earth was impacted in 2345 BC, the earth’s tilt shifted, but the moon remained in its original orbit around the centre of mass.
Dodwell could perhaps be attributed with being slightly correct if my above assumption is true. An impact may have altered the Earth’s obliquity, but it did not occur in historical times, but rather it may have been the impact that formed the moon itself 4.5 odd billion years ago (give or take, as I cant recall of the more accurate figure).
CevinQ – “The picture that napier and clube paint is one of events happening, after the insertion of the taurid progenitor, regularlly ovewr the course of many millenia.
It might have even started before the YDB event, as celestial themed rock has been found in Nv. that predates the YDB event.”
I would suggest that we could also add the O18 record of the Greenland ice cores, which seem to show that what occurred at the YDB AND THE END OF THE YDB may have also happened several times earlier, going back to at LEAST the 30 kya time that Clube and Napier give for the breakup of the Encke Progenitor – and all the way back to 50 kya.
These events are put off as Dansgaard-Oeschger events by the orthodoxy. And because of the work of Bond and Heinrich, those are read as “ice-rafted debris”, flowing down from the surface as icebergs melted. (BTW, such “debris” is prtty much all microscopic dust p[articles and NOT macro-sized rocks.) But while they claim to have icebergs calving as a mechanism for the WHAT, they do NOT have a mechanism for WHY IRD-interpreted dust should have a 1475-year period for several periods consecutively.
I argue that D-O events, Heinrich events, and Bond events are misread and are possibly from an impact origin. I am looking into just such a possibility. But it is HARD to find actual forensics on what they refer to as “continental rocks” – like WHERE on the N. American continent they came from. If off the LIS, then they should have been from the Greenland side of Canada. (This does NOT necessarily preclude IRDs off the Norwegian mountains. But I am working on something that might explain those in the same breath, too.)
Simply put: WHY would the LIS calve more on a regular 1475-year cycle? Is there any evidence ANYWHERE that glaciers flow more readily on some cycle at ALL, much less a 1475-year cycle? This shortcoming is a big hole in the IRD hypothesis, which is currently accepted a fact by the orthodoxy.
On the other hand, Clube’s and Napier’s work suggests that their certainly COULD be a regular periodicity to danger from the Encke Progenitor fragments known as the Taurids. No, they did not to my knowledge do anything toward this. Not yet.
So, REH, along with the real potential to be cyclical, yes, the D-O events DO precede the YDB – but they ALSO precede Clube’s and Napier’s Encke Progenitor breakup at 30 kya, going all the way back to 50 kya or so. And where does that lave the idea? Possible. Perhaps their date is off. Perhaps the ice cores don’t show quite what (and when) everyone thinks they show. Perhaps some other factor. Perhaps some combination of those two need to be rectified with each other.
So it is certainly not a slam dunk. Not now, anyway. But it still seems a possibility and not a bad one, either.
‘@Steve Garcia : “First off, we are not an electrical universe website”
/shrug
Well, that’s really not at issue is it? I like to see things as possibilities without having to compartmentalize everything by unnecessary boundaries. Like Arthur Aufderheide once said, “All knowledge is connected to all other knowledge. The fun is in making the connections.”
The mere idea that celestial events were occurring in the lifetime of the human race is a relatively new discovery which will result in the tossing out of quite a few long held assumptions.
I raised Thunderbolts Project research because it raises the possibility of plasma related electrical events from possibly solar activity, space dust from cometary tails or passing debris swarms which could also cause the characteristics of planetary “impacts”. Evidence of such an electrical event would have many overlapping evidentiary characteristics in common with the established YDBI findings.
Of course, this does not preclude the occurrence of “regular old impacts”, but it does add other possible layers to a catastrophic global event that would have created a striking impression on human cultures at the time.
It could also explain some of the anomalous factors that muddy the water; the back and forth conjectures going from volcanic to cometary impact origins, even the suggestion of “wild fires” as explanations for the nanodiamonds, metallic microspherules, carbon spherules, magnetic spherules, iridium, charcoal, soot, and fullerenes enriched in helium-3.
Nano-diamonds are forever:
“The discovery occurred when Hoffman and his team investigated the effect of an electrical field on the formation process of nano-diamonds. Here too the experiment initially provided incompatible findings, but everything changed thanks to one moment of serendipity and scientific intuition.It was about dusk, so that the light in the lab was dim. A research student (Irina Gouzman) called Hoffman to check the deposition system and then started the process as she had already done many times before. She activated the electrical field but this time forgot to turn on the extremely hot wire. In the shadowy light of the lab, to their surprise the researchers noticed a spark within the experimental device that had remained dark because the heated wire had not been turned on.”
“It turned out that the electrical field is what caused the electrical discharge and this event created the energetic species that contribute to the formation of the nano-diamonds that constitute the initial crystallization clusters. Under these conditions the carbon and hydrogen ions accelerate rapidly to the surface in which they are implanted and form the initial diamond nucleus. ”
And, yes, it is all speculation at this point in regards to nailing down what exactly happened. Even Robert Schoch couldn’t resist wading in on the subject:
Robert Schoch: The Catastrophic Termination of the Last Ice Age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUqdYBxbbck
REH – “The Taurids were created by debris left over from comet Encke. This shower, which produces spectacular fireballs, appears to originate from the Pleiades asterism within the constellation Taurus.”
See, this is all about uniformitarian thinking. When we shift to catastrophist thinking, another story emerges:
From Frank Joseph’s The Destruction of Atlantis –
‘@ Steve Garcia
Love that info! I watched a Polynesian Pathways documentary sometime ago, it was very interesting when it came to their accounts of “heavy or muddy” skies, the stories were very similar and could be found cultures in and around the whole of the Pacific.
http://www.polynesian-prehistory.com/
[quote] “It appears that this civilization may have suffered a catastrophic event such as a tsunami precipitated by isostatic rebalancing as the final meltdown of the last Ice Age occurred between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago. Pulses of meltwater as ice dams broke and 1-2km thick ice shelves collapsing into the sea would have caused rapid flooding, with the possibility of Tsunamis. Scientists believe that sea levels at this time could have risen 20metres in 100 years, this would certainly have led to the collapse of this great civilization. “[/quote]
Here are some snippets that represent some of the myths that invoke the idea of a sky that was close to the earth:
Polynesian (various)
>MAUI, the demi-god, looms very largely in Polynesian myth, tradition, and folk-lore. MAUI’S home was for a long time enveloped by darkness. The heavens had fallen down, or, rather, had not been separated from the earth. According to some legends, the skies pressed so closely and so heavily upon the earth that when the plants began to grow, all the leaves were necessarily flat.
Samoa:
>Another Samoan story is almost like the Hawaiian legend. The heavens had fallen, people crawled, but the leaves pushed up a little; but the sky was uneven. Men tried to walk, but hit their heads, and in this confined space it was very hot. A woman rewarded a man who lifted the sky to its proper place by giving him a drink of water from her coconut shell.
Maoris:
>Ranginui and Papatuanuku are the primordial parents, the sky father and the earth mother who lie locked together in a tight embrace. They have many children…And so the children of Ranginui and Papatuanuku see light and have space to move for the first time. While the other children have agreed to the separation Tāwhirimātea, the god of storms and winds, is angered that the parents have been torn apart.
And now we have Frank Joseph’s name being offered up. Talk about a “moment of serendipity and scientific intuition”……
Andrew Collins, Robert Bauval….. and all of them are so right, the ark’s and historians have so messed this up.
I’m glad this is one forum that can bring these things up, backed with cold-blooded scientific facts and statistics. Here are two websites that I pay attention too.
http://www.morien-institute.org/index.htm
http://www.barry.warmkessel.com/4related.html
now I’m going to add a web news item that has nothing to do with meteors BUT everything to do with how little we do know and it has everything to do with temperatures in the range of 3000 degs. So do we REALLY KNOW what science that ancients had….I don’t think so. I think we have “fear”…of the unknown…
….About 170 Ulfberhts have been found, dating from 800 to 1,000 A.D….
….Modern blacksmith Richard Furrer of Wisconsin spoke to NOVA about the difficulties of making such a sword. Furrer is described in the documentary as one of the few people on the planet who has the skills needed to try to reproduce the Ulfberht….
….In the process of forging iron, the ore must be heated to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to liquify,…..
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/499601-mysterious-viking-sword-made-with-technology-from-the-future/
Jonny,
Thanks for the critique of manuscript, even though Dodwell is likely off the mark, its still a fascinating coincidence that he arrives at a date for a catastrophic event that modern interdisciplinary work arrives at for a catastrophic event.
REH,
The native californains have host of stories that fall about the flood and the sun being obscured.
From the mythology of the multi ethnic Yosemite( they were a mix of miwok, mono, and yokuts)
From the legend of
“This was’ the beginning of a series of calamities which nearly destroyed the great tribe of Ah-wah-nee’-chees. First a great drouth prevailed, and the crops failed, and the streams of water dried up. The deer went wild and wandered away. Then a dark cloud of smoke arose in the East and obscured the sun, so that it gave no heat, and many of the people perished from cold and hunger. Then the earth shook terribly and groaned with great pain, and enormous rocks fell from the walls around Ah-wah’-nee. The great dome called Tis-sa’-ack was burst asunder, and half of it fell into the Valley. A fire burst out of the earth in the East, and the ca’-lah (snow) on the sky mountains was changed to water, which flowed down and formed the Lake Ah-wei’-yah. 1 And all the streams were filled to overflowing, and still the waters rose, and there was a great flood, so that a large part of the Valley became a lake, and many persons were drowned.
After a time the Great Spirit took pity on his children, and the dark cloud of smoke disappeared, the sun warmed the Valley again into new life, and the few people who were left had plenty of food once more.”
And from the Bay Miwok of the northern Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta and clear lake area.
From the story, “HOW SAH’-TE SET THE WORLD ON FIRE”
“When Sah’-te came home he found that his beads were gone. “Who stole my beads?” he asked.
He then took his yah’-tse [the stick the people used to wear crossways in a twist of their back hair] and stood it up in the fire, and oo’-loop the flame climbed it and stood on the top. He then took the yah’-tse with the flame at one end and said he would find out who stole his shell money. First he pointed it to the north, but nothing happened; then to the west, and nothing happened; then east; then up; then down, and still nothing happened. Then he pointed it south toward Tu’-le-yo’-me and the flame leaped from the stick and spread swiftly down the east side of Lower Lake, burning the grass and brush and making a great smoke.
In the evening Wek’-wek came out of the roundhouse at Tu’-le-yo’-me and saw the country to the north on fire. He went in and told his grandfather that something was burning on Clear Lake.
Ol’-le the Coyote-man answered, “That’s nothing; the people up there are burning tules.”
Ol’-le knew what Wek’-wek had done, and knew that Sah’-te had sent the fire, for Ol’-le was a magician and knew everything, but he did not tell Wek’-wek that he knew.
After a while Wek’-wek came out again and looked at the fire and saw that it was much nearer and was coming on swiftly. He was afraid, and went back and told his grandfather that the fire was too near and too hot and would soon reach them. After a little he went out again and came back and said, “Grandfather, the fire is coming fast; it is on this side of the lake and is awfully hot.”
Ol’-le answered, “That’s nothing; the people at Lower Lake are burning tules.”
But now the roar and heat of the fire were terrible, even inside the roundhouse, and Wek’-wek thought they would soon burn. He was so badly frightened that he told his grandfather what he had done. He said, “Grandfather, I stole Sah’-te’s hoo’-yah and put it in the creek, and now I’m afraid we shall burn.”
Then Ol’-le took a sack and came out of the roundhouse and struck the sack against an oak tree, and fog came out. He struck the tree several times and each time more fog came out and spread around.
Then he went back in the house and got another sack and beat the tree, and more fog came, and then rain. He said to Wek’-wek, “It is going to rain for ten days and ten nights.” And it did rain, and the rain covered the whole country till all the land and all the hills and all the mountains were under water–everything except the top of Oo-de’-pow-we (Mount Konokti, on the west side of Clear Lake) which was so high that its top stuck out a little.
There was no place for Wek’-wek to go and he flew about in the rain till he was all tired out. Finally he found the top of Oo-de’-pow-we and sat down on it and stayed there.
On the tenth day the rain stopped, and after that the water began to go down and each day the mountain stood up higher. Wek’-wek stayed on the mountain about a week, by which time the water had gone down and the land was bare again.”
And from the Soboba (of the Tehachapi Mtns of South central cal.) creation myth.
“”Before my people came here they lived far, far away in the land that is in the heart of the Setting Sun. But Siwash, our great God, told Uuyot, the warrior captain of my people, that we must come away from this land and sail away and away in a direction that he would give us. Under Uuyot’s orders my people built big boats and then with Siwash himself leading them, and with Uuyot as captain, they launched these into the ocean and rowed away from the shore. There was no light on the ocean, Everything was covered with a dark fog, and it was only by singing as they rowed that the boats were enabled to keep together.
“It was still dark and foggy when the boats landed on the shores of this land, and my ancestors groped about in the darkness, wondering why they had been brought hither. Then, suddenly, the heavens opened, and lightnings flashed and thunders roared and rains fell, and a great earthquake shook all the earth. Indeed, all the elements of the earth, ocean, and heaven, seemed to be mixed up together, and, with terror in their hearts and silence on their tongues, my people stood still awaiting what would happen further. Though no voice had spoken they knew something was going to happen, and they were breathless in their anxiety to know what it was.
Then they turned to Uuyot and asked him what the raging of the elements meant. Gently he calmed their fears and bade them be silent and wait. As they waited, a terrible clap of thunder rent the very heavens, and the vivid lightnings revealed the frightened people huddling together as a pack of sheep. But Uuyot stood alone, brave and fearless, facing the storm and daring the anger of Those Above. With a loud voice he cried out ‘Wit-i-a-ko!’ which signified ‘Who’s there? What do you want?’
“But there was no response. The heavens were silent! the earth was silent! The ocean was silent! All nature was silent!
“Then with a voice full of tremulous sadness and loving yearning for his people Uuyot said: ‘My children, my own sons and daughters, something is wanted of us by Those Above. What it is I know not. Let us gather together and bring “pivat,” and with it make the big smoke and then dance and dance until we are told what is wanted.” So the people brought pivat–a native tobacco that grows in Southern California–and Uuyot brought the big ceremonial pipe which he had made out of rock, and he soon made the big smoke and blew the smoke up into the heavens while he urged the people to dance. They danced hour after hour until they grew tired, and Uuyot smoked all the time, but still he urged them to dance.
“Then he called out again to Those Above, ‘Wit-i-a-ko!’ but still could obtain no response. This made him sad and disconsolate, and when the people saw Uuyot despondent and downhearted they became panic-stricken, and ceased to dance, and began to cling around him for comfort and protection. But poor Uuyot had none to give. He himself was saddest and most forsaken. of all, and he got up and bade the people leave him alone, as he wished to walk to and fro by himself. Then he made the people smoke and dance, and when they rested they knelt in a circle and prayed. But he walked away by himself, feeling keenly the refusal of Those Above to speak to him. His heart was deeply wounded.
“But as the people prayed and danced and sang, a gentle light came stealing into the sky from the far, far east. Little by little the darkness was driven away. First the light was gray, then yellow, then white, and at last the glistening brilliancy of the sun filled all the land and covered the sky with glory. The sun had arisen for the first time, and in its light and warmth my people knew they had the favor of Those Above, and they were contented.”
This story roughly parallels the hawaiian creation story
[I have been out and about and not able to contribute. LOL: Some may be glad…]
REH – “It appears that this civilization may have suffered a catastrophic event such as a tsunami precipitated by [A:] isostatic rebalancing as the final meltdown of the last Ice Age occurred between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago. [B:] Pulses of meltwater as ice dams broke and 1-2 km thick ice shelves collapsing into the sea would have caused rapid flooding, with the possibility of Tsunamis. [C:]Scientists believe that sea levels at this time could have risen 20 metres in 100 years, this would certainly have led to the collapse of this great civilization.”
Sorry, REH. This person is showing that they have not informed themselves about ANY of these three topics – and IMHO – are faking it quite a bit.
A: Isostatic rebound had/has NOTHING to do With Polynesia. It has to do with LAND rising in response to the removal of ice on top of LAND. Such land rising has nothing at all to do with islands in the Pacific and sea level. Sea level and isostatic rebound are talking about two very different and unrelated things. Ice melting over the sea areas – which did a decent amount after the YD ended – would have nothing to do with EITHER sea level rise or isostatic rebound. Melting ice over ocean waters adds nothing to sea level rise (look it up), and melting over land would create isostatic rebound but no reason that the ocean waters would rise – unless the land AREA increased, which to my knowledge no one has ever argued happened.
If I am wrong, I am willing to be informed where I am wrong.
B: This person has the uninformed idea that the Laurentide ice sheet was 1-2 km thick at its margins. This is simply not true. The 2 km thickness was at the CENTER of the LIS, not at its perimeter. The LIS thinned out near the edges and was only a few hundred meters near the edges – thinning out to about nothing at the southern edges and not much more near the eastern coast of Canada. I have read up on this quite a bit, and most people have a completely wrong impression that the ice was 1-2 km thick almost everywhere. Not true. I hold the scientists responsible for this misunderstanding, because they know otherwise and yet still allow the general public and popular science writers to continue mis-stating this.
C: Which “scientists” believe that there was a 20-meter rise in 100 years? Is this shown in any sea level rise graphs or data?
David –
“Andrew Collins, Robert Bauval….. and all of them are so right, the ark’s and historians have so messed this up.”
Okay, you think that, and I lean that way, too, but I am pretty sue Collins and Bauval have it wrong, too. We are in the middle of all of this, in the chaotic stage of science progress on this area of inquiry, and I can’t think that anyone has it right yet.
I have always thought that Bauval drew the wrong conclusions about the alignment of the Giza big 3 pyramids. For one thing, his ANGLE is not correct when he tries to equate the Giza angle with Orion’s Belt. With me, that shoots his idea down 100%. They built massive monuments to great precision and then put the 3rd pyramid (Menkaure’s) in the wrong position? I don’t buy it. Never did. And anyone who based any work or thinking on Bauval’s work I can’t credit that, either.
Collins does some good work, but MUCH of what he does is parrot other people and try to put it together with his own twist. I’d put him in the middle of the alternate research pack. My best recommends in those circles comes down to Chris Dunn (who doesn’t touch on any of this), Robert Schoch, and Graham Hancock. Ed Grondine’s work is also to be highly respected (even if I see things is slightly different ways from Ed).
As to historians, I take anything they say with a grain of salt. One reason is that every historian has a different interpretation of ANYTHING – so which one is to be believed?
Arkies? They can create an entire civilization based on a finger bone, so what does that tell you about their reliability? They don’t have enough forensic type evidence to pee on, in any field that they deal with. They also have to re-adjust their thinking just about every time a shovel turns up new evidence. I agree with Hancock about how much Gobekli Tepe’s age at 12,000 years should convince everyone that the arkies don’t know their butts from sinkholes.
Anthros? Same thing as arkies.
Paleontologists? They may have the very least amount of evidence and the highest amount of guesswork.
Geologists? They at least are actual scientists, but in some areas they are guessing, too.
Alternate researchers? Many are mainly compilers of other people’s work, so they are a bit like historians. Many, but not all. But some of the many just point at things and say stuff like, “What could that mean?” or “It’s a mystery!” Giorgio is a lot like that. He’s fun, but so far I haven’t seen any reason to take him seriously. My good friend David Hatcher Childress makes no claims and seems satisfied with helping people get exposed to all of the mysterious stuff.
I think the alternate guys generally have it a little more than the arkies and anthros – but that none of them have THE answers on much of anything. I am glad that the alternate researchers are out there, though, because there is SO much that the academics have gotten wrong. Being better than the arkies isn’t a very high bar to climb over.
p>Re: The Indian tale about Yosemite Valley.
That story could not possibly relate to events connected to the YDB. This is because there is a 700 year hiatus in human occupation of California that shows up the archeological record. And which begins with the YD. So any native oral traditions from California are passed down after people repopulated Ca. And by people who weren’t there during the ice age, or the beginning of the YD.
The valley was full of ice during the ice ages until about 10,000 YA. The earliest humans in the Valley didn’t show up until 4,000 to 6,000 YA
Note that the Indian stories make no mention of glaciers filling the valleys.
The missing half of half dome cannot be accounted for by the amount of rock in the talus piles at it’s base. So contrary to the imaginations of the first people in the Ahwanee, or “Deep Grassy Valley” Missing half didn’t just fall into the valley. It was broken off, and taken away by the Glaciers long before the Ahwaneechee, or Deep Grassy Valley People arrived. And that missing half can in fact be accounted for in the amount of rock in the terminal moraines at the valley’s mouth.
As for the part about monstrous fires to the east, and major earthquakes; that part rings true. Because the timing of the first people into the valley coincides with some major volcanic eruptions just a few miles to the east at Mammoth Mountain, and the Inyo Craters. The last eruption of the Long valley caldera was about 760,000 YA. So it’s off the suspect list.
On a time scale of millennia, and evidenced in the dendrochronological record, mega droughts lasting half a century, or more are typical climate fluctuations for California. And those droughts tend to be followed by floods of epic proportions.
Hope this helps.
~A California Hillbilly who grew up in them thar hills.
Jonny –
Thanks a lot as usual for your input and information.
My feedback:
“It has been a while since I looked at Dodwell’s work, but from memory there are few issues with the thesis. Dodwell’s collected data and analysis would on first inspection seem compelling. However, the big thorn in the side comes from Newgrange which is aligned to the winter solstice, and was constructed around 3100 BC, so any change in axial tilt in 2345 BC, would change the sun rise point at the solstice after this date, unless the axis of the earth before 2345 BC was close to what we actually think it was from Stockwell’s calculations.”
I am surprised that you are talking about an axial tilt. 🙂
“Secondly, there are the issues regarding the alignments of monuments, or rather the measurements of the alignments, whether the alignment exits, and the dating of them.”
I generally have a tough time with claims of alignments. Two reasons. 1. Everyone seems to cherry-pick on alignment or a handful of alignments. If only a few alignments align, then why would builders put the sometimes large numbers or stones in place? I don’t know the answer(s), but I have to think that ALL the stones have a purpose. Thus, I suspect that even the alignments that DO align are only part of a larger system.
“Thirdly, to shift the Earth’s axis by any great amount would require a tremendous amount of energy.”
Sure. This is what stumps everybody. Velikovsky reasoned that it would take an “external vise” to grab the Earth kind of by both ends and torque it sideways. Hapgood went with an off-center ice cap which would break loose and drag the world with it, or at least the crust.I guess this Dodwell is the first I’ve heard of who thought in terms of an impact being able to do it.
Factors in an impact tilt would include:
1. Is the entire solid mass tilted? If not, then the lithosphere only would need to be looked at.
2. A solid earth tilt would require VERY much more force.
3. The velocity of the impactor.
4. The vertical angle of impact with the surface. A lower angle (more tangential) might provide more torque force, rather than centripetally. Any centripetal force would subtract from the total force of the impact. At the same time, a lower angle body would lose much mass and energy in passing for a longer time through the atmosphere.
5. The density and hardness of the impactor. Denser and harder would deliver more energy to the surface materials.
6. The actual “ultimate strength” of the material within the impactor. A snowball impactor would have much or most of the impact energy be used up in destroying the impactor itelf, rather than deliver the impact force to the target materials.
7. The coefficient of friction of the lithosphere and the mantle (or the mantle and the outer core).
8. The contours of the sliding plane (if it has vertical projections or not at any points, which might mechanically “lock” the outer/moving portion with the materials that it sits on)
9. The location of the impact might matter. Near the edge of a tectonic plate? More in the center of a tectonic plate? What kind of rock is the plate made of (continental rocks or basalt)?
10. Is it an ocean impact? A shallow angle, in particular, may have the energy attenuated/muted/reduced.
11. Is it an ice cap impact? Again, perhaps even MORE energy attenuated.
12. The geographical heading of the impactor at impact with the surface. The direction may be the same as the rotation of the Earth or in a somewhat retrograde direction. The former would have less relative velocity than the latter, vis-a-vis the target material. A north-south direction might drive the lithosphere obliquely to the rotational velocity of the Earth’s surface.
13. How big is the impacted tectonic plate? And could this affect the ability to push THAT plate? And could that plate – once moving – have the capacity to push the adjacent plate?
14. How does the impacted plate “mesh” with the adjacent plate, along the line of impact? (Would it slide UNDER rather than push edge-to-edge?) (How about OTHER plates? After all, if any part of the world’s lithosphere “tilts”, it would seem necessary for all of it to move.)
“The amount of energy required would require a very large impact, and likely not much on earth would have survived the impact itself”
If as big as Chixculub, almost certainly this latter would be correct. However, if, say, the YDB impactor caused a tilt, then based on the few extinctions, the impactor would have necessarily been less damaging, no?
“(I imagine there would be quite a bit of crust melting)”
Or vaporized. Still, at SOME radius any or all melting or vaporization would stop. It would seem that an object that dived deep enough (and at a sufficiently low angle, too) into the crater should then have a better “purchase” with which to push a tectonic plate.
“…least of all the effects of an axial tilt.”
Not at all clear what this means,, vis-a-vis any melting.
“…Dodwell’s acceptance, since he links the 2345 event”
Except with the single possibility of the YDB impact, It seems to me to be a fool’s errand to try to put a date to such a possible impact. The YDB hypothesis wasn’t driven by the creation of a brand new hypothesis but by climatic, geological, and biological evidence
“From a study of the starting point of other natural phenomena, which accord with a logarithmic sine curve (e.g. the first or major phase of the light curve of a new star after its initial outburst), it seems probable that the earth’s rotational axis was suddenly changed by the force of impact in 2345 B.C., from an original inclination of about 5 degrees, by an amount of about 21.5 degrees to a new inclination of about 26.5 degrees.
“Now there is probably a specific reason why he states that the earth originally had an inclination of 5 degrees. The reason is that the moons orbit around the earth is tilted 5 degrees to the ecliptic, while the Earth’s is 23.5 degrees. So obviously the moon must have orbited around the Earth’s equator in the past, and when the Earth was impacted in 2345 BC, the earth’s tilt shifted, but the moon remained in its original orbit around the centre of mass.”
Or maybe multiple impacts didn’t only happen to the Earth; perhaps the Moon was hit in the same event and driven into a higher or lower declination.
“Dodwell could perhaps be attributed with being slightly correct if my above assumption is true. An impact may have altered the Earth’s obliquity, but it did not occur in historical times, but rather it may have been the impact that formed the moon itself 4.5 odd billion years ago (give or take, as I cant recall of the more accurate figure).”
I honestly can’t see how the Moon could have been ripped out of the body of the Earth as is kind of popular now. Not and become such a perfectly round body. That is a big sticking point with me. I know that some astronomers have considered how much material is necessary in order to produce round planets and satellites. I am not sure the Moon’s mass fits, but maybe it does. I don’t think so, though.
Oh, and on that last point…
If the Moon was ripped out of the Earth by some sort of collision, it would seem to me that the Earth would have a VERY deep gouge/crater/trough in it. Some have proposed the Pacific as such a blemish. I undersdtand their eagerness to find a relic of such an event – if for no other reason than to find an existing remnant.
I don’t see how:
1. As I’ve pointed out here before, the entire “oblateness” of the Earth – from the bottom of the Marianas Trench to the top of Chimborazo STILL is basically within the acceptable quality-control roundness tolerances for billiard balls (allowing for the size difference), so that if the Earth was as small as a billiard ball it would roll just as true. To me, that is ROUND, not oblate.***
Such roundness is, I contend, too round to have had the Moon ripped out, and too shallow for the Pacific to represent the crater of such an event. It is just too wide and too shallow for my sense of proportion to accept it as a crater.
***I use the same logic to, in my head, argue that the mechanism for the wobble in the Earth’s spin axis is from the effect on the equatorial bulge. While the excess on the equator would be THE material most affected by any force applied (the greatest amount of torque would come from the “extreme fiber” which such a bulge represents), it imply seems that the magnitude of such a torque would be too small, due to too LITTLE “excess material”.
An extreme example might be to envision a spoked wheel. Let’s give its hub a spherical diameter of, say, 1000 km, and the rim let’s give a diameter of 8,000 km radius, close to that of Earth. And let us machine the entire outer surface to within the tolerance of billiard balls, ratio-ed up. Now tilt the wheel and rotate it at 1 revolution per day. Obviously this would have a VERY great difference between the polar perimeter and the equatorial diameter.
I worked in the design of industrial fans, so I have some background in these things, though I don’t consider myself to be an expert. Besides, I AM rusty at it…
The “throw” of a rotating object is magnified greatly at high RPMs. At low RPMs, the “throw” is reduced a LOT. 1 revolution per day is a REALLY low rotational rate – about 0.000694 RPMs. Think in terms of an unbalanced car tire/wheel. The faster the wheel rotates, the more the heaviest point on the wheel is slung around, and the more the tire wants to tear itself apart. Those of you who have had this actually happen know what I am talking about. (This is what Hapgood thought was the mechanism for causing a tilt of the crust, but that is off topic for this…)
Now there is also the resonant RPM, which is experienced at ONE car velocity when one has such an unbalanced tire. The entire are shakes from the “throw” of the heaviest spot on the tire, but if the velocity increases (increasing the actual centrifugal force), the vibrating stops. At 0.000694 RPM, one has to think that such a resonant RPM cannot be possible for the Earth.
My point is that a rotating object can have a larger equatorial perimeter and still run QUITE true – especially at low RPMs. And 0.000694 RPMs is a super-low rate of rotation. All forces at that RPM would be tremendously LOW.
I also would add that, from what I know about rotating objects, having a nearby gravity force should not affect the rotation in the slightest. (An equivalent would be to put a magnet 20 rim diameters away from an IRON wheel machined and tilted as I’ve described. Would the magnet pull on the rim of the wheel and try to straighten its rotational axis to 90° from the magnet? My answer would be, “No, and why WOULD it?”)
…On Hapgood, I read his book perhaps 30 years ago. In it he delineates the thinking of his mathematician. At one point in the process I noticed that the mathematician came to an opposite understanding of what happens from what I perceived would happen. I looked it over carefully several times, and to this day I still think that Hapgood’s mathematician let him down by zigging when he should have zagged. And without that input from that man, I am not sure Hapgood would have even published his book – because the results of the calculations would have been non-supportive of Hapgood’s premise.
‘@GARCIA:
I don’t view this in same way as you, I see the process of someone trying figure things out.
The documentary is about the origins of the Polynesian cultures across the Pacific, on both sides in Asia, Australia, North and South America. The puzzle is worth looking into and conventional history places seafaring Polynesian fairly late in human history with some bewildering and notable exceptions.
The documentary also raised up the intriguing subject of some of the more deeply submerged Molokai fishponds off the coast of Molokai and what that might say about dating human habitation of the islands.
The documentary also supports the idea that todays indigenous Hawaiians arrived from Alaska and and the American Northwest Coast:
I’ve bookmarked the applicable section of the Cousins Across The Sea video:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ckBh70GQNeA#t=900)
The legends of the sky and earth being the same color is shared by both North American natives and the Hawaiian culture. (the second part of the documentary is on Vimeo, the link and password is available on the http://www.polynesian-prehistory.com front page)
But they weren’t the first peoples to have discovered Hawaii, according to Hawaiian tradition there was an elder race of people living on the remote islands in the Hawaiian chain. The Menehune Culture (the First People) offers a possible explanation about an earlier people on the island chain which in more ancient times was far more extensive than the subsided remnants which remain.
On a side note: I had the opportunity to visit the ruins of Nan Madol on Pohnpei and see for myself, I found it very curious to see that much of the sprawling complex was stretching to a considerable depth underwater, even at low tide. This seems to me to indicate a sea level increase or subsidence that has occurred since the place was built. Establishment archeology says about 1500 years ago. but once again, dating relies on material that could have been deposited in periods long after the site was inhabited.
Lastly, and somewhat related:
Easter Island is a good example, and Robert Schoch has waded in on the possible miscalculations involved with Easter Island.
That is the big question. What we do know is that sea level has increased 120 meters (around 400 feet) since the end of the last major glaciation. It is entirely likely that the rise was not totally gradual and perhaps had periods of drastic increases and longer periods of very gradual increases, the type of which we see today.
Post-glacial sea-level changes around the Australian margin: a review
https://research.jcu.edu.au/tropwater/resources/Lewis%20et%20al.%202013%20Post%20glacial%20sea%20level%20change.pdf
So, considering the likelihood that most of the increase happened in the first portion of time following the end of the last major glacial period and plateaued (in a relative terms) around 8k~ BP, we get an inkling that the more dramatic sea level rise was concentrated prior to 8k~ BP.
I highly recommend Monash University’s SahulTime for a good visual of the sea level increase:
http://sahultime.monash.edu.au/
The SahulTime delivery system extends the interface paradigms of “Digital Earth” geobrowsers through a further dimension in time. Satellite-style reconstructions reflect changing coastlines, the icons are time-aware, and even photographs can can be taken through a timewarp to view reconstructed ancient landscapes.
CAVEAT:
SahulTime is a “reconstruction based on available data and knowledge, which always has an inherent uncertainty. As a visual model SahulTime provides a good first approximation of the Earth’s past…”
REH: “[Steve Garcia] This person is showing that they have not informed themselves about ANY of these three topics – and IMHO – are faking it quite a bit.
I don’t view this in same way as you, I see the process of someone trying figure things out.”
Maybe. I sue didn’t. They need to at least go out and learn what isostasy is, then – BEFORE using the term.
And a sea level rise of 20 meters in 100 years is 0.2 meters per year, or 8 inches a year – about the same as the tides on the Mediterranean. Or about 5/32″ per week. Other than very slowly swamping coastal settlements over 4 generations of people, there is no reason I can see that such a rise would collapse several societies – especially ones away from the coasts, which shouldn’t be affected at all, except as trade partners with coastal communities. Certainly people would have simply moved as much to higher ground as they could – and maybe even moved buildings, block by block.
And confabulating and mixing up ice dam breaks with calving and the wrong height of coastal ice – I don’t give them a pass on that many mistakes in one sentence. Is there ANY ic disaster they did NOT throw into that sentence?
It is a great example of what I’ve come to call “Sloppy thinking” – people who don’t bother to try to actually teach themselves anything or learn, and then go out and put things together n nonsense ways. The sloppy thinkers never learned logic in school or how to assess information and collate it into a gestalt that isn’t just garbage.
Sorry if I call garbage “garbage”, but. . .
REH, you are too kind to the guy, IMHO… 🙂
REH –
A nice interactive graphic on the Sahul time. It certainly does show the uniformitarian viewpoint…LOL
I do have a curiosity question about that, if I may:
With New Guinea connected to Australia from about 30 kya to about 17-18 kya, the unique fauna of Australia come to mind. Weren’t they isolated long before that? The climate/environment of that land bridge NOW is extremely tropical, I would imagine. But with the ice age the climate should have been cooler, so it seems that Oz animals would have followed the milder climate north, and could have had an easy route to widen their habitat range.
So, is there evidence that any animals crossed that land bridge – in either direction?
If not, one has to wonder if that depicts what really happened.
BTW, did you go to Nan Modol with David Hatcher Childress, who has taken tour groups there in recent years?
‘@ Garcia:
“did you go to Nan Modol with David Hatcher Childress”
————————
No, I was living and working on Kwajalein Atoll from 1993 until 2002, so Pohnpei was a puddle hop away pretty much. I was able to spend about 14 days total out there, beautiful island, the ruins are eerily impressive.
uniformitarian viewpoint
It’s fairly neutral on that count, it just shows the rote increase but lacks the necessary resolution to really indicate the rate or severity of each incremental change. The pace does appears to have slowed down at some point after the initial sea level rise as described in this paper:
Post-glacial sea-level changes around the Australian margin: a review
https://research.jcu.edu.au/tropwater/resources/Lewis%20et%20al.%202013%20Post%20glacial%20sea%20level%20change.pdf
Divergent opinions remain about:
(1) exactly when sea level attained present levels following the most recent post-glacial marine transgression (PMT);
(2) the elevation that sea-level reached during the Holocene sea-level highstand;
(3) whether sea-level fell smoothly from a metre or more above its present level following the PMT;
(4) whether sea level remained at these highstand levels for a considerable period before falling to its present position; or
(5) whether it underwent a series of moderate oscillations during the Holocene highstand.
Concerning:
“So, is there evidence that any animals crossed that land bridge – in either direction?”
————————
You are referring to Wallacea:
“Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of mainly Indonesian islands separated by deep water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Halmahera, Buru, Seram, and many smaller islands. The islands of Wallacea lie between Sundaland (the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and Bali) to the west, and Near Oceania including Australia and New Guinea to the south and east. The total land area of Wallacea is 347,000 km.”
“During the ice ages, sea levels were lower, exposing the Sunda shelf that links the islands of Sundaland to one another and to Asia, and allowed Asian land animals to inhabit these islands. The islands of Wallacea have few land mammals, land birds, or freshwater fish of continental origin, who find it difficult to cross open ocean.” -wikipedia
So, the last major glacial saw Australia connected enough to allow bio-migration. All that ended about 12,000 years ago.
Also of slightly related note (north Australia to south Australia):
Outback palms: Aboriginal myth proven with DNA studies
http://www.digitaljournal.com/science/outback-palms-aboriginal-myth-proven-with-dna-studies/article/430068
Aboriginal legend relates the story of “gods from the north” bringing the seeds of the Outback palm tree to central Australia. Incredibly, DNA studies have proven what was considered a myth to be true.
REH,
A childhood friends father was stationed kwajalein from the sixties to early seventies.
Thanks for that link to thePalms, that work butresses work in other fields and areas that show population movements the into Australia have happened several times and some fairley recently.
“Researcher Irina Pugach and colleagues now analysed genetic variation from across the genome from aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, island Southeast Asians, and Indians. Their findings suggest substantial gene flow from India to Australia 4,230 years ago. i.e. during the Holocene and well before European contact.”
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/01/gene-flow-between-indian-populations.html?m=1
So this study says that people from India came to Australia and brought with them the dingo.
And about those dingos
“Based on a mutation rate of mtDNA with A29 being the only founder type, it was considered that dingoes probably arrived in Australia between 4,600 and 5,400 years ago, which was consistent with archaeological findings. However, it was also considered that dingoes might have arrived from an even earlier date of up to 10,800 years ago in the event of the mtDNA-mutation rate being slower than assumed. It was further reasoned that these findings strongly indicate a descent of dingoes from East Asian domestic dogs and not from Indian domestic dogs or from wolves. ”
Well then so the story Indians who came in about 4200 years ago, hmmm that 42kilo year thing shows up even in Australia, didn’t bring the dingo with them or they brought dogs that were related to dingos original ancestors. Or their were several recent movements of people into Australia.
My whole point being, those isolated palms out there in the desert are likely there because the outsiders showed up.
They brought with them superior tools, like dogs the atlatl and bow and arrow and rudimentary agriculture, the ancient people of coastal south/se Asia and PNG were growing palms by the end of the ice age.
New people push into the area, and some of the original inhabitants are displaced into the harsh interior and take the palm seeds with them.
It was also remembered in the mythology, as the article noted.
The Polynesian question is a fascinating one isn’t it?
It illustrates how complicated the movements of the people of the Pacific basin can be.
The cultural similarities between the “polynesians” and certain native American groups are just as striking as the difference between “polynesians” and the Lapita, their purported ancestors are.
REH –
I asked, ““So, is there evidence that any animals crossed that land bridge – in either direction?” and by that I meant between 30,000 and 18,000 as shown on the interactive map.
I was talking about biomigration in a different time period altogether. Biomigration between Australia and what they call Wallacea during other times is not what I was asking about.
Based on the map on Wiki, the area I was asking about isn’t Wallacea but would seem to be Sahul – New Guinea and Australia as shown on that map. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Map_of_Sunda_and_Sahul.png/400px-Map_of_Sunda_and_Sahul.png
Also, Wiki talks about biomigration between ASIA and Wallacea, but not between Australia and Wallacea. But they DO answer my question with this:
“Similarly, Australia and New Guinea to the east are linked by a shallow continental shelf, and were linked by a land bridge during the ice ages, forming a single continent that scientists variously call Australia-New Guinea, Meganesia, or Sahul. Consequently, Australia, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands share many marsupial mammals, land birds, and freshwater fish that are not found in Wallacea.”
Question answered.
Thanks!
REH –
Wow! Thanks! That Australian sea-level paper has some good stuff in it.
On the surface of it, I think that Oz is a good place for measuring sea level rises, because of the reasons they give – it is interior to its tectonic plate and it is far from the ice sheets. So the extraneous effects should be minimized.
NICE! And the one graph straddles the YDB, too.
Steve,
A thought on your out of balance wheel thoughts.
One also must consider whether the impact is a elastic or inelastic collision.
The generalized view is in one of an impact being somewhat elastic, with a good portion of the energey being reflected back into space with the ejecta column.
Some work from the usgs shows that might not be the case.
In the case of a oceanic impact, the earth might absorb nearly all of the energy as well as the mass of the impactor.
If we think of the earth as a somewhat homogenous sphere who’s mass distributions are in equilibrium with its axis of rotation, and an object impacts and is completely absorbed within the crust , it must have some effect on axis of rotation , just a wheel balance weight.
CevinQ –
From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/elacol.html —
“A perfectly elastic collision is defined as one in which there is no loss of kinetic energy in the collision. An inelastic collision is one in which part of the kinetic energy is changed to some other form of energy in the collision. Any macroscopic collision between objects will convert some of the kinetic energy into internal energy and other forms of energy, so no large scale impacts are perfectly elastic. Momentum is conserved in inelastic collisions, but one cannot track the kinetic energy through the collision since some of it is converted to other forms of energy.”
Okay, my take on your point is that you are wondering if ALL of the kinetic energy is STILL kinetic energy immediately after the collision/impact.
Methinks that all impacts by meteors or comets are certainly partially converted to heat energy and light energy. This would fit the definition of an inelastic collision, it seems.
Also: “If we think of the earth as a somewhat homogenous sphere who’s mass distributions are in equilibrium with its axis of rotation, and an object impacts and is completely absorbed within the crust , it must have some effect on axis of rotation…”
Hmmm . . .
And what if the Earth’s mass distribution is NOT in equilibrium? I assume by the term “in equilibrium” that you mean balanced around the axis of rotation. And what if that is not really the case?
Gravimeters show many variations in the gravity at different locations all over the surface of the world. I have no idea if the net of all the combined gravimeter readings would be balanced. But my instinct is to think that such is NOT the case.
Reason might suggest that if some weight imbalances exist, then those might in themselves be affected by the gravitational attraction of the Moon and cause some wobble in the Earth’s axis. The imbalances may be on the equator or above the equator, but either way, with the tilt of the Moon’s orbital plane vs the equator, the attraction from the Moon will act on the heavier locales in ways that will tend to pull them down to the Moon’s orbital plane. That does in itself seems like it would cause wobble. Adding them all together, do they balance out? Are they more or less than the amount that the oblateness of the earth’s shape might cause? About the same?
I am probably blowing it out my rear end to think along those terms, but it seems like an idea I might want to hold as a “What if”? for the future and see if it can be found out for sure and, if so, then used in some way.
Likely I will find out that it is wrong. But for now I will leave it at “What if?”
Steve; Just got back from some time off R&R and was catching up on the tusk and read your responses on the angle of the earth’s position. Here’s a thought: If the earth was struck in the polar region-north or south-would it be easier for the impact to change the tilt of the earth vs a more direct body hit closer to the middle of the globe? It would still take a massive object to do this but I would think it is more plausible in theory.
Jim –
I’d have to agree that all other things being equal (angle of impact, e.g.) a polar impact would be more likely to cause a tilt, if one is talking about the rotational axis (i.e., the core).
If we are talking about the crust/lithosphere shift but not the core, I’d think that, with the same angle of impact, an impact anywhere should move the crust/lithosphere pretty much the same regardless of location. If the core does not go with it (which I’ve always thought supremely impossible without the impactor being a full-on planet), then the axis of rotation maybe would not be tilted – but it MIGHT still have residual oscillations for a long time – giving the appearance of a wobble or a tilt or a nutation in the axis of rotation. (That all happens to be something I am looking at this week/month/year/lifetime… LOL)
Any impactor that has enough oomph to break the lithosphere/crust away from its adhesion to the mantle has to be big enough to do a variety of things that uniformitarians attribute to the moon or internal forces. Hell, even quakes do some of that (lengthening the day, e.g.), and their energy is localized. Something big enough to have global consequences one way has to seriously be looked at for consequences in several ways – and consequences that are long-lasting.
Expect a mammoth-killer to be able to at least have the potential do ALL of the things to the rotation – screw with the angle, re-align east and west (for the surface dwellers), cause a wobble, change the length of the day – you name it. I’ve always ASSUMED that all of that would occur, until that is convincingly shown to not be the case. But then, I am a catastrophist. SOME of those things I believe are in the ancient accounts. And if some are, then the others would seem to be likely.
Jim – Addressing your initial question of the impactor causing an imbalance in the Earth, I was just reading a dumb Richard Muller paper which talked about an impactor causing a geomagnetic reversal because of snowfall (WHAAA?????), and his line of reasoning made me realize something pertaining to your question:
Let me take a look…
If the ice ages caused a drop in sea level of 130 meters and the ends of ice ages raised the sea level 130 meters, then the Pacific Ocean covering 32% of the Earth’s surface and with it all on one side it should create an imbalance every time the ice ages come or go.
Earth’s Surface Area Covered by Water 70.8% 361,132,000 139,397,000
Earth’s Surface Area Covered by Ocean 65.7% 335,258,000 129,444,000
Pacific Ocean 30.5% 155,557,000 60,045,000
Atlantic Ocean 15.1% 76,762,000 29,630,000
Indian Ocean 13.4% 68,556,000 26,463,000
Southern Ocean 4.0% 20,327,000 7,846,000
Arctic Ocean 2.8% 14,056,000 5,426,000
For consideration as to unbalancing, knock off the Arctic and Southern Oceans, which are essentially balanced, E-W.
That leaves 3 oceans, the Pacific (30.5%), Atlantic (15.1%), and Indian (13.4%), for a total % of 59.0%. The Atlantic and Indian are essentially on one side opposite the PAcific, so we can compare the ratios. Of that 59.0% the Pacific has 30.5/59.0 or 51.7% of it, versus 48.3%. 51.7/48.3 = 1.07. So there is 7% more area on one side versus the other.
IN terms of actual area and weight, that is 155,557,000 sq km versus 145,318,000 sq km – an excess of 10,239,000 sq km. If that area is balanced NOW, then when it was 130 meters lower the water weight would have been shifted to the non-Pacific side (where the ice sheets were). 0.130 km deep times 10,239,000 sq km is 1.331×10^6 cubic km of water difference. Subtracted from one side and then added to the other, that is a shift of 2,662×10^6 cubic km that is on one side during warm periods and that was then shifted to the ice sheet side during ice ages.
1,000 kg equals a metric tonne and is 1m x 1m x 1m, or 1 cubic meter. In a cubic km, then, there are 1,000,000,000 cubic meters. And that equals 1,000,000,000 metric tonnes of water in a cubic km.
Thus, the amount of water/ice shifted from one hemisphere to the other is 2,662,140 sq km x 1 billion metric tonnes/cu km, or 2.662 x 10^15 metric tonnes of water shifted east-to-west between the LGM and now.
If I did the math right, that is about the mass of an stony chondrite about 120 km across. (I hate metric because sometimes I misplace a decimal and don’t have a feel for when I do that.) If correct, that is about an average civilization killer.
If all of its mass stayed in the impact hemisphere, it would imbalance the Earth as much as the LGM did.
More or less…LOL
Steve; Checking your math may take me a lifetime or two but on the surface it looks good. At the end of your last post you mentioned the size of 120km being an average “civilization killer” Now for the $64,000 questions: How many average civilizations have there been??
Jim –
Did I actually say that? I think I was wrong on that. 120 km would have been bigger than Chicxulub. There would have been nothing average about a 120 km jobby. My bad.
Even 1 km is considered a real serious threat to civilization. So 120 km would be a lot of overkill – no pun intended.
Hey, no problem. What’s a decimal here or there when you’re destroying civilizations! By the way, I am still working on the Drake Passage article. Found some more info and I’m trying to create a better graphic for the impact site and I’m also trying to convert everything to an earlier format for easier display. Also this for an article. I don’t think I would survive a book. HAHAHA!
Time for folks here to swing by Watts Up With That blog again to confront the “There is no evidence for the YDB theory” fabulists again.
See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/11/dinosaur-killer-asteroid-near-miss-this-thursday/
The population geneticists have found dna evidence of both bronze age collapses.
From dienkes anthropology blog
“A different pattern is seen in the remaining majority (13/17) of populations, which share remarkably similar histories featuring a minimum effective population size ~2.1–4.2 KYA”
The graphs attached show population bottlenecks for nearly all of the populations of the med and europe, 4.2k years ago.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m4-XGZ-zFoY/VVzXWxtK9aI/AAAAAAAAKF0/XELjAeB6_54/s1600/ncomms8152-f2.jpg
just thinking as I look at a project I’m doing on the building programs of Egypt, a thought….
–if this “imbalance” was as broad as I’m getting the impression it was (nothing like wiping out an entire ice sheet in a few years), would there not have been a volcano or two in which the magnetic fields would have been altered—
just a thought
On the 23rd October 2015, Mike Baillie and I published an article for the conference proceedings “2200 BC – Ein Klimasturz als Ursache für den Zerfall der Alten Welt/2200 BC – A climatic breakdown as a cause for the collapse of the old world?”.
Unfortunately there is a six month embargo on the uploading of digital copies to the web, and so is only available in print. The title of the paper is
“Why we should not ignore the mid-24th century BC when discussing the 2200-2000 BC climate anomaly”.
Needless to say, it involves the 2350 BC event, hence why I post about it here.
CevinQ –
I apparently missed your comment and link to those graphs of bottlenecks in Europe at 4.2kya.
WOW. Now, see, that is better than ancient accounts. Someone quantified something – in that case population – and was able to compare the (relative) values over time and see a discrete pattern. WHAT they actually quantified – in terms of where the info/data came from – might be challenge-able, but otherwise this sort of thing is so much more solid and falsifiable (able to be tested for right or wrong) than accounts in often all-but-dead languages.
I don’t see a link to the paper the graphs are in. Could you put that up for us to go look at? I looked high and low on that blog and couldn’t find whatever that multi-graph image was from.
Just ran across this paper from MA Courty,
“The critical debate on the ignition-efficiency of extraterrestrial impacts has emphasized
the importance of identifying the fired record that was formed at the exact time of
the impact. This is aimed to avoid confusion with lightning-ignited wildfires that could
have started later due to impact-related atmospheric changes or vegetation destruction.
Here we report on diverse fired situations related to the 4 kyr BP impact that were
encountered in cumulative soils developed on flood plains and low-lying depressions
from various regions: the Moche valley (Peru), the Middle Euphrates plain (Syria), the
Khabur basin (Syria), Ebeon and Les Loups (West France), Baho, La Capoulière and
Mas de Vignole (South France). The study focusses on well-preserved fired stratum
that benefited from rapid burial just following the 4 kyr BP impact. The distinctive
fired stratum in the field display similar patchy burnt traces that locally appear as a
stratigraphical discontinuity marked by a burnt soil surface, or an abrupt change of
soil morphology. The attribution of the fired stratum to the 4 kyr BP event has been established from absolute radiometric dating and archaeological data. A detailed study
of the fired stratum using a standardised sampling method and a multi-analytical protocol
has lead to identifying a similar assemblage of exotic debris at the different sites
which shows distinctive characteristics of impact by-products [1]. Examination under
the petrographical microscope and the environmental SEM of the exotic components
within their host organo-mineral soil matrix has provided diagnostic criteria relevant
to discriminate the in situ fired signals linked to the 4 kyr BP impact (FSin) from the
effects of subsequent reworking (FSrw).”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i5fozs9whp3s14n/EGU06-J-03378.pdf?dl=0
Could someone post a list of which HTML tags actually work on this site, ie bold, italic underline and that sort of thing.
The embargo of our paper “Why we should not ignore the mid-24th century BC when discussing the 2200-2000 BC climate anomaly”(referred to above) has been lifted, so I can now share it online. You can download it from here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301621337_Why_we_shouldn't_ignore_the_mid-24th_century_BC_when_discussing_the_2200-200_BC_climate_anomaly
Please read “THE OBLIQUITY OF THE ECLIPTIC” by George F. Dodwell. This paper IMHO speaks on what has happened during the 2345 BC event. The causes are apparently terrestrial, but even more fantastic then if they were not. The Earth’s obliquity abruptly slipped by 2.5 degrees, which caused prompt global flood due to inertial motion of oceans and climate change over four centuries. Very interesting paper by a highly reputable astronomer, yet one of the ignored ones.
Casual Visitor
I have read Dodqell and have commented on it further up up this up this comment section https://cosmictusk.com/oldie-but-goodie-the-2350-bc-middle-east-anomaly-evidenced-by-micro-debris-fallout-surface-combustion-and-soil-explosion/comment-page-1/#comment-37842
Thank you for the link. I missed that. I cannot comment on Karnak and the archaeological aspect of the topic, but I can say that I have read the discussion on the Answers in Genesis site and it was not convincing to me either. I will comment on the purely mechanical aspect on the possibility of this to have happened. There are two more options to consider and both sides in debate are apparently unaware of that.
There are 4 axis-of-rotation disturbance modes known to me:
1. Impacts can disturb rotation of Earth, but as you correctly stated, not that much as Dodwell claimed.
2. Sun, Moon and planets pull on the equatorial bulge continuously and create precession and other secular changes, but these are continuous. Dodwell claimed a sudden change, so this influence can be ruled out too.
3. Redistribution of mass can alter rotation rate of an object. During Ice Ages a lot of water piled up near the poles, but it went near the equator when it melted off. This shift slowed the rotation of Earth slightly. However, the ice was not piled up uniformly, but in two large Ice Sheets. Redistribution of such asymmetric load into a more symmetric configuration can plausibly manifest as a sudden slip-up of the entire system into a new regime, as Dodwell claimed, although it could have been a gradual change.
4. Core and mantle rotate at different rates and even around different axes, which is evident from the fact that magnetic poles are not at the rotational poles. If in a sphere two mayor parts rotate differently, then they surely continuously try to balance each other by exchanging angular momentum by friction. It is (maybe) plausible that sometimes this exchange manifests as a sudden mantle slip-up, instead of a gradual shift.
Nobody considered the last two mechanisms, so I think that this makes the Dodwell hypothesis plausible too, at least from a purely mechanical standpoint.
While the magnitude of the initial shift is in dispute because it relies on Karnak only, it appears to me that the evidence for a later oscillation is more solid, since it is based on parallel independent sources.
Anyway, the Dodwell’s graph of later attenuation of the initial shift is consistent with what can one expect from a gyroscope to do. If kicked, a gyroscope would spontaneously recover its initial rotational axis orientation.
My point is that this event is at least plausible, if not even partially supported with evidence, which cannot be said for any alternative explanation known to me. Plausibility was also the conclusion of the analysis in the Answers in Genesis article, although they missed the two mechanisms that I mentioned here.
Your hypothesis about an impact being the cause is also valid, but in the absence of a gaping crater, or a better alternative,
I give more trust to the Dodwell’s arguments. At least at present. He spent a lifetime gathering evidence, and I respect him for that, even if he was inconclusive.
The smart question for the end is: What do you think your tree ring data says about Dodwell’s scenario, if anything at all ? (Hints: Higher obliquity would have temporarily yielded harsher climate globally, and sudden change of axis would have surely produced substantial flooding of coastal areas.)
Item 3… That was Hapgood’s idea 60 years ago, though I don’t think it was original with him. His mathematician screwed up the numbers, which supported his idea – or at least did not falsify his idea – as calculated. But I found an error in his math guy’s work, which DOES falsify it. That was like 15-20 years ago, and if you ask me what the particulars were, I wouldn’t know without having the book in front of me to refresh my memory.
Item 4… Core and mantle rotate at different rates? Whoever’s work that is, I’d like to see it. The ability to look downward is so limited, THAT would be a hell of a stretch, given present capabilities. They have only recently found a thin layer at the LAB (lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary) that has electrical characteristics that allows them to map the actual bottom of the lithosphere. They are very busy doing that mapping for the last few years and it continues. It seems to me that they are barely able to map the depth of the core-mantle boundary, much less tell anything about their rotational rates.
I DO agree that something internal has been causing the magnetic pole wanderings. I honestly do not think it is anything gradualist/stable. For the present I assume that it MUST be tied in with the latest magnetic excursion, tied in with Mono Lake and Laschamp – and instability between the core and the crust. WHAT mechanism that would be, I have ideas but not anything to hang your hat on. And what LAYER/boundary depth the instability exists at, that would be speculation, too.
Item 2… If a billiard ball were sized up to the diameter of the Earth, the Earth would be slightly more perfectly round than the billiard ball. I have long said that such roundness cannot create the precessions, because that mass – while very large by human standards – is too small AND BALANCED to do the wobbling effect of precession. Something else has to be underlying that phenomenon. From that you can probably tell that I don’t agree with the Milankovitch cycles, either. FAR, FAR too slow and gradual to trigger anything rapid (and by rapid, I mean in less than 10-50,000 years). BOTH are gradualist ‘crowbars’ – reasonable-sounding speculations (but nonsensical, IMHO), using uniformitarian principles to explain catastrophic events and phenomena.
Which brings us to Item 1. I don’t have Dodwell to read, so I don’t know his particulars. But from my own inquiries I would challenge his math on impacts yes/no disrupting the Earth’s rotation. When quakes that are INTERNAL to the system can cause small rotational changes, it would take a much smaller energy input to cause the same small changes. Depending on velocity, total impactor mass, density, and angle of impact, it should be possible for a change in rotation to come from an impactor. A quake is a slippage or breakage of lithospheric rock that happens at a rate of a few tens of meters per second, at most, and usually along a shear plane (a weak plane). A impactor with the mass of Mars or the Moon would certainly affect the Earth’s rotation. I don’t think anyone would deny that. Thus, the real issue is to find the threshold (minimum) of mass coming in at each velocity that could disrupt the Earth’s rotation. Was the K-T impactor large enough? Perhaps at one angle but not at higher angles. I would think it was, but I am biased in favor of the idea.
I am TRYING to work on that issue. I have found TWO phenomena that actually make it much easier than is generally thought, for the lithosphere to slip. I was amazed to find ONE. Finding then a SECOND one, I am still working out the numbers and the geometry. It is NOT just a simple issue of looking at total mass. Anyone who shows one formula and with it declares the impossibility, that person doesn’t understand the mechanics of what is going on. There ARE some surprises to it.